‘Aggressively non-empathetic.’ Passengers recount Brightline colliding with car

The eeriest part about when a Brightline train collided with a car on Wednesday, seriously injuring someone, was not the crash itself, but the moments afterward, passengers told the Miami Herald.

Riders aboard the train, which was headed to Fort Lauderdale when it struck someone in North Miami, said there was a nervous wait after the moment of impact — after which train staff allegedly treated the crash “coldly” and kept “eerie”, “non-empathetic” smiles as they tried to move passengers’ attention away from the mangled car.

The crash occurred around 4 p.m. near the 14100 block of Biscayne Boulevard. Miami-Dade Fire Rescue crews quickly attended to the person in the car, who has not been identified. They were airlifted to a nearby trauma center. Their condition is unknown.

Brightline did not immediately reply to a request for comment from the Miami Herald.

READ MORE: One person airlifted to trauma center after car and Brightline collide: fire rescue

Alison Bethel, a regular commuter on the Brightline, was on board and heard loud screeching and felt the conductor brake “really hard” in an attempt to avoid the collision.

This marks the third time Bethel was involved in or has seen a Brightline collision. One time, she was a passenger on the train as well, and the other she saw a car in front of her that had been slammed by the train.

On several occasions, she said she’s yelled at or flagged down cars to get off the tracks when a Brightline train was coming.

“I think there’s multi-stakes in this. I would not blame Brightline outright,” Bethel said. “There are people who, for some reason, don’t understand that it’s a fast-moving train…. There are people who their front part of their car is on the track, or their whole car is on the track, or they try to beat the arms that go down.”

Since beginning test runs in 2017, Brightline trains have struck and killed 194 people in Florida, an investigation by the Miami Herald and WLRN found. The vast majority were pedestrians or bike riders. Of the 194 dead, 168 were in South Florida: 68 in Palm Beach County, 67 in Broward and 33 in Miami-Dade. About 40% of the deaths have been officially ruled a suicide.

Brightline trains have hit 174 vehicles since 2018, but many of those car drivers or passengers survived. In those crashes, 25 people died, 63 were injured, and 104 people weren’t hurt at all, the reporting team found. Some of them bailed out of their cars before the train hit.

READ MORE: Private train, public cash: How Brightline has been buoyed by taxpayer dollars

‘Cold and bureaucratic’

The Wednesday Brightline train on its way from Miami heading north was filled with everyday commuters and families on their way to Orlando, possibly excited for a Walt Disney World or Universal Studios vacation, Bethel said.

Tom O’Donnell, a lawyer from Washington D.C., was on vacation in South Florida and used the Brightline for the first time earlier Wednesday to go down to Miami. He’d heard nothing of the service before but was awestruck after his first ride.

“The train is beautiful, the hubs are beautiful and the stations are fantastic,” he said.

His opinion shifted after the collision.

O’Donnell told the Herald the crash itself felt very minor from where he was sitting. He only realized something was amiss when train staff ordered everyone to put down their window shades to not see outside.

Over the about two hour wait, O’Donnell said staff didn’t tell them what was happening. The conductor only referred to it as a “trespasser” incident, which he found to be a callous way to put the situation after he found out through the news that a car had been hit and a person was injured.

“He made this legal conclusion and I thought, ‘How could he possibly know that so quickly?’” he said. “What if, God forbid, a child had walked out there or something? So right away a very aggressive offense [from Brightline] on that point.”

Staff continued to police riders, he said, to make sure they weren’t looking out their windows. When it came time to offload passengers into another train, O’Donnell was met with a series of Brightline employees with smiles on their faces.

“It was so aggressively non-empathetic, or I think appropriate for the situation,” he said. “It was cold and bureaucratic.”

He snapped back, “You know, there’s really no reason to smile,” as he pictured the person in that mangled car who could have been dead or seriously injured, information that he didn’t know at the time.

The incident stirred painful memories. O’Donnell’s uncle died by suicide after stepping in front of a train. Thinking back to those smiling Brightline employee faces, it only made him angrier, he said.

Call for safety measures, railroad education

Bethel and O’Donnell both advocated that more safety precautions need to be put in place to hamper the amount of collisions that have occurred.

“I mean the Brightline has such a reputation for so many accidents, and it makes me really sad,” Bethel said. “It makes me wonder what we can do as a community, or in these towns, … to educate pedestrians and drivers about railroad crossings, and what the Brightline can do.

“I feel sad when anyone is injured.”

READ MORE: Haunted by Brightline: A conductor got his dream job. Then people started dying.

While the Wednesday collision did dissuade O’Donnell from returning to Miami during his vacation, both he and Bethel said that doesn’t mean they’ll stop using the Brightline.

A few hours after he disembarked, Brightline gifted O’Donnell a $13 refund for his troubles — half of his ticket fare.

The email subject line read “Count on Brightline.”

This story was originally published November 23, 2025 at 5:30 PM.